PHILADELPHIA – Comcast Corporation is testing a 100 Gigabit per second optical solution from Nortel this week at the 71st meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) conference in Philadelphia.
It’s being dubbed as the first time that real traffic is run over a 100G wavelength on its existing network that is also carrying live 10G and 40G links. The trial is being run over the same optical infrastructure that supports a combination of high definition or HD video, Internet and voice traffic on Comcast’s existing fiber network from Philadelphia, PA to McLean, VA.
More than 1,200 Internet engineers are expected to attend the meeting and make use of this high-speed network to access the Internet.
“Testing an interoperable multi-vendor 100G solution will help provide us with important information about how new solutions will support a next generation of high-bandwidth services for the digital generation of consumers,” said John Schanz, EVP National Engineering and Technical Operations for Comcast. “As we continue to expand our cross-platform video, voice and data services, we need these types of innovative technologies from vendors like Nortel to support the rapid growth of new applications and services that run over our network.”
Philippe Morin, president of Metro Ethernet Networks at Nortel, added, “Comcast is testing the very future of networking with this 100G network trial. We can only imagine what new innovations may be sparked by the capabilities made possible with this technology.”
